A delightful sunset drive tonight, with some high quality sightings and a wide variety of cool animals to look at. Just look at how long tonight’s sightings list is!

And I do hate to be such a girl about this, but the Kalahari is home to more impossibly ‘cute’ animals than anywhere else. Take tonight, when a cute Cape Fox started digging frantically in the sand, to create a cozy new bed for itself. You could actually see the bliss on it’s face when it snuggled down into its little bed. There’s nothing wrong with calling something ‘cute’, if it’s really very cute.

Also snapped a quick and blurry photo of a Black Backed Jackal trying to catch a scent. It was also rather cute.

A cute Jackal

And finally, this Spotted Eagle Owl. Not tremendously cute, but it was eating a mouse. The mouse would have been very cute once.

Not a cute owl, eating a once cute mouse

Did you know that Owls can lift their food up into their mouths with their feet? It’s very dignified and it beats just ripping it up with their faces, like raptors do. The only other birds who can do this are parrots.

Sightings (i’m still really into gestation periods):

Brown Hyena (Gestation 90 days)
Meerkat (65 days)
Slender Mongoose (63 days)
African Wild Cat (65 days)
Black Backed Jackal (60 days)
Cape Fox (56 days)
Bat Eared Fox (60 days)
Springhare (77 days)
Scrub Hare (42 days)
Steenbok (7 months)
Springbok (5.5 months)
Gemsbok (9 months)
Wildebeest (9 months)
Spotted Eagle Owl
Giant Eagle Owl
Gabar Goshawk
Tawny Eagle
Pale Chanting Goshawk